give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, which some have
sought, without much success, to connect with the tribes of the Urall or
Altaï; these people are for the present provisionally called Sumerians.*
They came, it would appear, from some northern country; they brought
with them from their original home a curious system of writing, which,
modified, transformed, and adopted by ten different nations, has
preserved for us all that we know in regard to the majority of the
empires which rose and fell in Western Asia before the Persian conquest.
Semite or Sumerian, it is still doubtful which preceded the other at the
mouths of the Euphrates. The Sumerians, who were for a time all-powerful
in the centuries before the dawn of history, had already mingled closely
with the Semites when we first hear of them. Their language gave way to
the Semitic, and tended gradually to become a language of ceremony and
ritual, which was at last learnt less for everyday use, than for the
drawing up of certain royal inscriptions, or for the interpretation of
very ancient texts of a legal or sacred character. Their religion became
assimilated to the religion, and their gods identified with the gods, of
the Semites. The process of fusion commenced at such an early date, that
nothing has really come down to us from the time when the two races were
strangers to each other. We are, therefore, unable to say with certainty
how much each borrowed from the other, what each gave, or relinquished
of its individual instincts and customs. We must take and judge them as
they come before us, as forming one single nation, imbued with the
same ideas, influenced in all their acts by the same civilization, and
possessed of such strongly marked characteristics that only in the last
days of their existence do we find any appreciable change. In the course
of the ages they had to submit to the invasions and domination of some
dozen different races, of whom some--Assyrians and Chaldæans--were
descended from a Semitic stock, while the others--Elamites, Cossaaans,
Persians, Macedonians, and Parthians--either were not connected with